


rise like an ember in your name

by narcolepticbadger



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, POV Multiple, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 03:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2413265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcolepticbadger/pseuds/narcolepticbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire. </p><p>Beginning when they find themselves trapped together in Elsa's ice cave, Regina and Robin struggle to redefine their relationship in the wake of Marian's arrival. [Outlaw Queen. Re-envisioning season 4, one episode at a time.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rise like an ember in your name

_When there’s nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire  
_ \--Stars, “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”

* * *

 

Regina ran her fingers lightly along the ice walls, glancing at the girl who rocked back and forth on her knees in the corner. There was powerful magic here – in the girl, in the walls – uncontrolled though it was. She watched Robin pull a dagger from his belt and strike at the ice, only for the blade to shatter in his hand. She turned back to the wall, pressing her hand more firmly against it this time, and felt a sudden heat race through her blood as she conjured fire and sent it exploding outward.

Nothing happened.

She frowned, staring at her hand. There hadn’t even been a spark. She tried again, this time concentrating on her magic in a way she hadn’t had to for years. She let it build inside her, felt the flames expanding and licking hungrily along the pathways of her body as they surged forward…only to falter somewhere before they hit open air.

She tried to teleport instead, aiming for the town line, the last place she remembered before Elsa had trapped them. Nothing. She tried to teleport two feet to the left. Nothing. She tried every simple act of conjuring she could think of, a dart of panic rising in her chest as each attempt failed – and not only failed, but left her scrabbling for her magic when it should have come easily. And then the threads of magic abandoned her completely, snuffed out like a dying candle as her hands hung uselessly in the air.

The cold crept closer in its absence, and she shivered for the first time. It didn’t make sense. She had torn through Elsa’s ice magic just days before, and surely the walls that surrounded them now couldn’t be much different.

She turned to question the girl but stopped short as a jagged, loose piece moved inside her at the sight of him – _Robin_ – in her periphery, the edge catching somewhere deep by her lungs, and suddenly she _knew_.

“Oh, you’ve _got_ to be kidding me,” she muttered to herself.

Robin still prowled along the boundaries of their cage, searching for a way out, but at her words his eyes sought hers out, and then he came to her.

“Anything?”

“No,” she said, not quite able to look him in the face.

“But your magic…isn’t there something you can do?”

“I –” she swallowed heavily, wondering how she could explain this to him. She settled for, “No, not this time.”

He nodded once, accepting her answer, and she thought she saw something more, like he knew he had something – _everything_ – to do with their current situation.

“Let me talk to her,” she said, gesturing to Elsa, mostly because she wanted to go back to pretending he wasn’t there. Why did it have to be him? She could have taken Gold, Emma, Mary Margaret, _anyone_ but Robin right now, but, no, it was him who had come after her and gotten them both stuck here when he had startled the girl.

“Elsa?” She crouched down next to the girl, gently resting a hand on her back.

Elsa raised her head, her eyes wide and wet. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to take it back.”

“It’s all right. We can work through it together.”

“No, I-I can’t.”

“You can,” Regina said firmly, and it took everything in her not to snap the words.

She didn’t want to admit that her magic was gone, that they were helpless unless Elsa could bring the walls down herself. That kind of pressure would probably just scare Elsa more, and Regina didn’t have time to waste on coddling and coaching and waiting for this girl to pull herself together while she and Robin turned into popsicles. That was not the way Regina Mills intended to leave this world.

She and Elsa locked eyes and rose together at the sound of muffled voices coming from the other side of the ice. Regina couldn’t pick out words, or who the voices belonged to, but she had a pretty good guess as to who else would be investigating a city-wide power outage in the middle of the night.

“Emma?” she called sharply.

There were shushing noises, and then the unmistakable voice of the Savior hesitantly called back, “Uh, hello?”

“Emma, can you hear me?”

“Regina? Where are you?”

Honestly, how Emma could qualify herself as the Savior _and_ a sheriff when she possessed no observation skills boggled Regina’s mind.

“Are you, by chance, standing next to a large block of ice?”

“Yes.”

“We’re inside that.”

“Oh. Do you need help?”

Regina sighed and rolled her eyes at Elsa, half-turning away from the wall. “Well, that’s it, we’re doomed.”

“Hey! I heard that, Regina!”

“Good for you.”

“Who else is in there?”

“Elsa and Robin.”

“And Elsa would be…?”

“The engineer behind this rather lovely ice cave and the walls around our city, yes.”

“Can’t you just poof yourselves out of – ”

“No.”

“…Okay. Can I talk to Elsa?”

“Talk. She’s right here.” Regina pushed Elsa forward, trying to smile at her encouragingly. “Oh, and Emma, we’d really like to not freeze to death tonight.”

“No one is going to freeze to death.” Mary Margaret sounded slightly exasperated through the ice.

“Then you’d better hurry.”

She walked away. The Charmings would doubtlessly begin lecturing Elsa about the power of love and believing in oneself, and Regina wasn’t sure if she could stomach that at the moment.

“Regina.” Robin’s voice carried easily across the enclosed space, and she couldn’t ignore him. “We’ll stay warmer if we sit together.”

Robin was already sitting against one of stalagmites, knees pulled up to his chest, blowing warm air into his hands. Neither of them was dressed appropriately for the weather, but at least Robin was wearing pants. She sank down next to him as close as she dared, keeping her legs underneath her and pulling the hem of her dress over her knees.

“I hardly think this is the most effective way to conserve our body heat, Regina.”

“I hardly think Marian would find such close contact between us appropriate,” she answered coolly.

“She would find it preferable to our freezing to death, I assure you.” She stared at him and slowly raised one eyebrow. “To _my_ freezing to death, at least,” he conceded with a half-smile. “And I still need your help for that.”

They were both shaking, badly, as she settled herself between his legs, resting back against his chest, and thank the gods they could blame it on the cold, on reflexes they had no control over, and they didn’t have to acknowledge that it went deeper than that. Robin hesitated before closing his arms around her, binding them together.

It was uncomfortable, being this close to him again. The way they still fit together so well despite the distance that had grown between them, despite the new edges they formed as they tried to share warmth, only warmth, and nothing more.

“Ah, there’s this.”

He held a small, leather-bound flask in front of her, and she didn’t have to ask what was inside.

 _You still owe me that drink_.

The memory, the echo of his voice made her shiver, and his arm tightened around her, seeking to sooth her, before he remembered himself. She wondered if he had always carried whiskey with him, or if this was something new.

“I’m pretty sure that will just kill us faster.”

She felt him shrug behind her, and, after a minute, she shrugged back. They were going to die in here or they weren’t, and she supposed a little whiskey wouldn’t tip the balance any particular way. And she could _really_ use a drink if they were going to do this whole we-just-broke-up-but-now-we’re-going-to-intimately-exchange-body-heat thing.

They passed the flask back and forth in silence, the whiskey pleasantly burning on its way down even though Regina knew it was doing nothing to stave off the cold or the hypothermia that would eventually set in. That was already setting in.

He made her take the last sip, and sometimes it was so easy to hate him and his effortless chivalry and the way it reminded her of all the reasons they didn’t belong together. But the anger only ever lasted for a moment before it gave way to the aching, fierce love he always stirred up within her, and that was worse. It would be easier if she could hate him.

She closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself feel, really _feel,_ Robin’s body curled around hers. His heartbeat against her shoulder blade. The way she rode the rise and fall of his chest every time he breathed warm air against her neck. His smell – different, less forest-y than it used to be. Polished wood. Snow. Smoke. Whiskey.

This was how it was meant to be between them.

“Don’t fall asleep.” His voice in her ear, words rumbling through his chest and into hers like the beginning of a landslide.

“I know that.”

“We need to keep each other awake.”

It was a good idea, but she snarked anyway. “What do you want to do, play charades?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“You think of something, then.”

After a moment. “Animal, vegetable, mineral?”

“Fine.” Of course he would suggest the most boring guessing game in existence.

“I’m thinking of an animal.”

“Is it human?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a woman?”

“Yes.”

“Is she in this room?”

“Yes.”

“Robin, if you’re thinking of Elsa, I _will_ let you freeze to death.”

“…Damn,” he said softly, and she could almost feel his smirk through the layers of clothing that separated them.

“Really? That was pathetic. How can you be so bad at your own game?”

“I couldn’t think of anything better! Thinking…is becoming a bit of a problem, actually.”

She knew what he meant. It was getting harder to string coherent thoughts together, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol they had drunk. She looked over at Elsa, who seemed to be in deep conversation with one of the walls, and hoped she was making more progress than it appeared.

“Maybe we should just talk.”

“And what, exactly, do we have to talk about? Your wife? How I tried to kill her all those years ago, and how I’m paying for it now?”

The words poured out before she could stop them, and Robin stiffened behind her.

“I was thinking more along the lines of ‘strange weather we’ve been having lately.’” He didn’t even sound angry. He _never_ got angry with her, just resigned and hurt and sarcastic when he should be throwing it all back in her face. “But, okay, we can talk about Marian.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She fingered the empty flask beside them and wished there was more. She wasn’t even sure why she wanted it: to feel braver, or to feel warmer, or to forget, or to let the cold take her faster.

She wanted him to leave. Ever since the day Marian had come back and he had chosen her (and she understood, and she had loved him for his nobility even as it destroyed her), she had waited for Robin to take his beautiful, mended family and never look back. She could bear that. She couldn’t bear his kindness, or the way he was _there_ , always there, every time she turned her head. Not anymore.

“It’s easier if we just…don’t,” she whispered.

“All right.”

They fell back into silence, everything colder between them. They were both losing heat, and the temperature was still dropping, and Regina didn’t know how long they had been sitting there, but it had been far, far too long.

Elsa flitted back and forth across the ice, still muttering to herself or maybe to the Charmings. She stopped once to kneel in front of them and placed a hand on Regina’s cheek. Regina couldn’t feel it, and she knew that was a bad sign, even more telling than the concern in Elsa’s eyes.

“Just keep talking to them,” she told the girl, hoping that the words were clear. “They’ll figure something out. They always do.”

Robin’s arms hung more loosely around her, and his breaths came more slowly, the rise and fall of his chest barely rocking her now.

“Robin?”

“Mmm?” he hummed, the vibrations running up her spine and reminding her just how little of her body she could feel.

It was hard to tell under this light – the ice made everything a shade darker than sky – but she thought his fingernails were turning blue. She supposed hers were, too. She reached for his hands, taking their weight and touching skin-to-skin and remembering that, once, she had had reason to claim him as her own.

His hands were cold and heavy in hers.

His hands were cold.

His hands were cold.

It stuck in her head like a scrap of melody, replaying the same four notes over and over. Her heart took the words, reshaped around them, beat them out until her blood was running with that one thought, and she felt a heat rising through her, a wildfire, gone as soon as it had broken out.

Somewhere, very far away, someone was saying her name again and again, or maybe it was the wind rushing past her ears as sound and movement bled together and all the colors drained from her world, and she was left in a coldness and a darkness so profound she couldn’t even shiver, couldn’t even draw breath, couldn’t even

* * *

 

Heavy, and warm this time, surrounded by light she could see even through her eyelids, and a constant beeping keeping time perfectly with her heartbeats. Hospital. The word flickered up from somewhere, and, with it, pieces of what had led her there.

She kept hers eyes closed, trying to feel out the shape of her surroundings. There were approximately one thousand blankets piled on top of her. The voices of Emma, Charming, and Mary Margaret burbled in the corner like a radio with its volume all the way down. Someone was holding her hand, but it was too small to be the one she wanted.

“Mom, are you awake?” Henry whispered next to her, and she felt a lazy smile spread across her face.

“Regina?” Damn. The one time the Charmings were paying attention, she didn’t want them to.

“I’m here,” she said blearily, blinking until the room came into focus around her.

“How do you feel?” Mary Margaret asked.

“Like I’m being smothered.” The blankets spread over her – only two, not a thousand – were horribly pink.

“I hear that’s a common side effect for people brought back from the brink of freezing to death.” That was Charming with his usual dopey smile and inane commentary. Gods, how she wished Mary Margaret had left him at home with the baby. Permanently.

“Well, don’t look at me. I didn’t trap myself in a giant block of ice.” She sighed. “Is she all right?”

“Elsa? Yeah, still a little shaken up, I think, but she’ll be fine,” Emma said.

They were going to make her ask, weren’t they? Bastards. “And Robin?”

“He wasn’t in great shape when we brought him in, but he was awake, talking, and they didn’t have to resort to any aggressive,” and here Emma gestured to the IV running into Regina’s arm, “reheating measures.”

 _Unlike you_ was the unspoken end to that sentence, and Regina had to look away from them all and their concerned faces.

“They kept him overnight for observation as well, but they’ll be releasing both of you in the morning as long as you keep showing improvement.”

“How did we get out anyway?”

“Robin thought you were dead. Everybody kinda panicked and…here we are.”

Regina looked up at Emma, unable to mask the surprise in her voice. “You?”

Emma nodded. “Yeah. Me.”

“Thanks,” Regina said quietly. “I’d still feel better if you could figure out how to use your magic under conditions that _don’t_ involve mortal peril, but…thanks.”

“You and me both, Regina.”

She spent the next few hours drifting in and out of sleep, sharing the bed with Henry even though he kept kicking her in the shins. She told the Charmings they could go home, but Mary Margaret just shook her head and laughed, saying, “Trust me, I’m used to sitting up all night with family now. And you’re a nice change from Neal. Less whiny.”

Emma and Charming wandered from the waiting room to the coffee machine to her room, sometimes bringing back updates about Robin and his family or gossip about the nurses.

Mary Margaret waited until they left for another lap around the hospital and made sure Henry was completely out before she moved her chair even closer to Regina’s bed, her eyes serious.

“Did something happen between you and Robin?”

Regina’s hand froze where it had been stroking through Henry’s hair. Her eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, have you been living under a rock for the past, I don’t know, five months?”

“I meant last night, Regina. Did something happen last night?”

Something red and hot was choking her, climbing up her throat, and she clenched the blanket tightly to keep from flying apart. She could barely get words out, but once they broke loose, she could feel herself losing control, and they grew, vicious and loud and painful.  

“I couldn’t use my magic because _he_ was there. We drank some whiskey of questionable quality. We barely looked at each other. We almost died. Are any of these things ringing a bell? I’m sure I could narrow it down a little if I knew exactly what it was you’re trying to accuse me of.”

Mary Margaret held up a hand to stop her, glancing at Henry.

“I’m not accusing you of anything. It’s just, Robin was frantic when Emma finally broke through the ice, and he seemed to think there was a reason he was okay and you were…not so okay. That you had done something to yourself, to him, to, well, make sure he got out alive even if you didn’t.” The last few words came out in a whisper, as if Mary Margaret was afraid to speak them aloud.

Regina stared at her, her body still taut, and wondered how people could spend their whole lives surrounded by magic and not understand it. Ironic, really, how the girl held up as the purest example of true love had no clue how the power behind it worked.

Finally Mary Margaret settled back in her chair and let the conversation drop.

“If you want to talk about it, you know I’m here.”

They sat together without speaking until the doctor came in and cleared Regina to leave, removing the last of the needles and wires from her. She was stuck wearing some of Emma’s clothes – oversized and cheaply made but, admittedly, comfortable – because Henry had deemed everything in her own closet unsuitable.

“Do you really want to wear a pantsuit home from the hospital, Mom? I don’t think so. You’ll thank me later.”

She almost laughed when Emma elbowed him and leaned down to mutter, “Well played, kid. Well played.”

The Charmings went to wait for her outside while she signed off on paperwork at the front desk. And there he was. Robin, also dressed in clothes that weren’t his, things that looked like they had been pulled from the very back of Charming’s closet. He looked ridiculous. And beautiful.

He was pale. His eyes were wild. He was angry with her, and now she could see the dangerous animal inside him, the one that stole and killed, and she thought perhaps those dark undercurrents of him belonged to her alone.

“You used magic on me.”

“It wasn’t intentional.”

“You could have died,” he growled. “I thought you had.”

She looked away. “I _said_ it wasn’t intentional.”

How could she explain to him that magic, like blood, redirects itself when a body starts shutting down? It didn’t matter that she wanted to run away from him, that it hurt her to touch him, her magic had identified _him_ as her most vital part, the one thing that must be preserved even at the cost of all others.

She felt him take half a step towards her, and she snapped.

“Why did you follow me? Why, why, couldn’t you let me go after Elsa on my own?”

And she saw it there, as he finally looked away from her, the muscles in his jaw working: the ties between them holding fast despite vows and broken hearts and wives raised from the dead. The same trap had caught them both – fate, or true love, or whatever stupid name you wanted to give it – and he was just as powerless to escape it as she was.

“Regina, I think we should go.” Mary Margaret had appeared at her side, one hand on Regina’s back, and she was glaring – _glaring_ – at Robin as fiercely as she could.

She told herself not to, but she looked back once, just before Mary Margaret guided her through the double doors and out into the sunlight. Robin was watching her, his eyes burning everything they touched, and it didn’t make anything easier, but at least Regina was the one walking away this time.


	2. for the love I'd fallen on

_I chose to feel it, and you couldn’t choose  
_ \--Stars, “Your Ex-Lover Is Dead”

* * *

He’d been lingering at the desk, running his eyes over the papers in front of him again and again, aware that Marian and Roland were growing impatient somewhere behind him. There were so many words in this world that he needed to learn, but, essentially, the papers told him he was still alive. He understood that much, but he read on, pretending to puzzle out the meaning of this or that because, really, it was her he was waiting for, and when she finally appeared all he could think was _damn her,_ damn _her_ as he straightened to meet her.

Every time he saw Regina, she was smaller than he remembered. It made him want to laugh sometimes, how they had all been frightened of her, this _woman_ – who right now was pale and vulnerable and dressed in clothes far too large for her, clothes she must _hate_ because they made her look so uncommonly human. They had been right to fear her, for even though she had changed, softened over the years, she was still a formidable thing to behold, and perhaps he should be frightened too, at least of what she made him feel, but he only ever wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her fast.

Hours removed from the cold, and he still shivered. His hands clenched into fists, the skin tightening and pulling at the small burn marks she had left there, the marks he hadn’t been able to explain to anyone, and from the way she couldn’t quite look at him, he knew. She had done _something_ , she had taken that risk, and suddenly he was bristling all over, furious, the anger boiling out of him as he remembered: waking up, Regina limp in his arms, and knowing, knowing he had killed her.

…

_He thought Regina was speaking to him again, and he roused himself enough to respond, one low, questioning syllable pulled up from the depths of him, from the part that had already fallen into shadow._

_“Mmm?”_

_No response. He tried again, but everything felt heavy and strange, and he thought, perhaps this could wait until later, when they weren’t so tired._

_It started slowly, a sense of movement somewhere beneath him that barely registered until he felt fire – something between heat and pain, like an arrow driving deep into flesh – running, rushing through him so fast he thought he might drown in it. But his eyes opened, he gasped for terrible, heaving breaths that stabbed at him, and his joints ached with the cold he could now feel again._

_And Regina, slumped against him, lightly touching his hands. When he folded his own around hers, her skin burned him in an entirely different way, and her name was torn out of him, desperately, emptying his lungs as he called for her._

_He tried to wake her, to check for a pulse, but his movements were clumsy and slow, for he was half-gone himself – only half, while she was –_

_The girl in blue swung her head towards them, reading the anguish there, and yelled to someone else, and from nowhere Emma and Mary Margaret and David surrounded him, pulling Regina from him as he struggled to raise the both of them from the ground. They took over, shepherding him into a car, Regina in David’s arms, and asked him questions he couldn’t answer because his brain was still sluggish and because he couldn’t tear his attention away from her, lifeless as she was._

_They were separated again at the hospital, more questions, a swarm of doctors, bright lights, blankets warmed with electricity, and the veil of distance and confusion he had been pinned under slowly lifted. They wouldn’t tell him anything. David had to hold him down so he wouldn’t go searching for her himself, and finally someone sedated him. The last thing he saw as he looked numbly down at the needle in his arm were the small burns on his hands, familiar though he couldn’t quite place where they had come from._

_He came to with Marian and Roland sitting at his side, and now he was relieved they had drugged him so he could slip back into the darkness and not answer their questions, not look at them, not now. Later, David and Emma returned, bringing coffee and news, telling him that Regina was alive and well, and he heard nothing else until Roland cried out to him, only then realizing how tightly he had been gripping the boy’s hand._

_..._

They stood there, trading words, his worry coming out as accusations, and a small voice in the back of his head reminded him that Marian was watching, but that didn’t stop either of them. Mary Margaret glared at him, the expression sitting strangely on her face, and led Regina out through the hospital doors, and it was only after she had fully gone from his line of sight that he could force himself to look away. 

* * *

Word spread that Regina had stepped down as mayor and disappeared, leaving cryptic notes for her son about needing time. When Robin heard that she had delivered these notes via crow, he’d had to duck his head to hide his amusement from his men. The woman had a knack for dramatic exits, that was sure.

If it had hurt him to see Regina, it hurt a hell of a lot more not to.

He understood why she was keeping her distance – from everyone, not just him – and he wished he had the same opportunity to run away. Preferably with her, but even escaping alone, just for a little while, would help him sort through the loose ends in his head. But he had a son and, now, a wife to look after, and because he couldn’t leave them, he buried himself in them, spending all of his time on Roland and Marian and trying to mean it.

Some nights he rolled over in bed and was surprised to find Marian there, so strange was it to have her at his side again. He spent hours, sleepless, studying her, the first woman he had loved and who had loved him, trying to remember that part of his life, the ease between them then, and struggling to relearn the curves and angles of her body in a way that didn’t feel like a betrayal.

Marian biting her lip as she concentrated. Marian leaning down and lighting a fire, deftly, her hair falling forward over her shoulders. Marian watching their son at play and, even before she turned to him, Robin knowing the exact shape of her smile, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners.

These small gestures he had once known so well loosened something in him, old feelings for Marian stirring from where he had tamped them down long ago, and sometimes he took her hand of his own accord, or kissed her in the early hours of the morning as light played in patterns across her face. But more often than not, he found himself startled by her touch and by her presence and by all of the ways she seemed wrong to him, how they never quite fit together the way they were supposed to.

He loved Roland, and he loved Marian, he _did_ , but he hadn’t asked for this.

He stole a few hours here and there to wander, always finding himself in the places he had shared with Regina, the places that felt like her even in her absence. He became something of a regular at the diner, needing the coffee because he still wasn’t sleeping and needing some kind of company, even if nobody spoke to him.

Regina, it seemed, had gained a family too, through all this. A family that watched Robin apprehensively, frowning at him when he looked their way, as if they believed he meant to hunt Regina down and hurt her more. As if he wasn’t hurting, too.

Hook approached him one afternoon after eyeing him from across the room, no doubt taking in the dark circles that had settled permanently around Robin’s eyes and the general uncared-for look that hung around his clothes and body these days. He and the pirate had never talked much, and there was hesitation in the man’s step, but Hook’s expression was sympathetic enough when he slid into the chair next to Robin.

“You’re really taking the ‘sick’ part of _lovesick_ to a whole new level, aren’t you, mate?”

Normally he would have a clever retort for this, but the man was right, and so Robin simply ran a hand distractedly through his hair and muttered, “Yeah.”

“Can I give you some advice?”

“You’ve got experience with your first love coming back from the dead after you’ve already moved on, then?”

“Well, no…no, not as such.” The playful light emptied out of Hook’s eyes, and they sat uncomfortably for a moment. Finally Hook clapped him on the back and stood up, slipping something hard into Robin’s hands under the table. A flask.

When Regina hadn’t resurfaced after an entire week, he cornered Mary Margaret as she pushed Neal around town in his stroller.

He held up his hands placatingly as she tried to step around him. “Please, I need to know. Is she all right?”

She cocked her head to the side, measuring him up. “‘All right’ might be overstating it, but…she’s getting there.”

“Will she ever forgive me?”

His voice cracked a little at the end, and perhaps that was why Mary Margaret softened for him. She briefly looked down at her child and then back at him, and through her eyes he saw himself: standing helplessly before her, a lost boy. And he hated to be the object of anyone’s pity, but he was so, so lost.

“It’s not about forgiveness. It’s about coping. She doesn’t blame you, Robin; she just wishes things were different.”

_As do I_ , he answered in his head, nodding his understanding to Mary Margaret as she passed him by.

* * *

He found Regina almost as soon as he had stopped seeking her out.

She was sitting on a bench in the small park that nestled against the edge of the forest – her profile straight and sharp and, as always, smaller than he remembered it. If she heard his approach, she made no move to acknowledge him, and it was almost as if she knew he had been coming all along.

“You look better than the last time I saw you,” he said with a sigh as he lowered himself down next to her.

She didn’t turn to look at him, but there was an edge of disapproval in the way she said, “I’m not sure I can say the same for you.”

Wordlessly he dug the flask that Hook had given him out of his coat and held it out to her.

“Is this a thing we do, now?” She sounded amused, on the verge of laughter.

“Do you want it to be?”

She took the flask from him and uncapped it, wrinkling her nose as she sniffed at the contents.

“I don’t do rum.”

“Nor do I. But it’s all we have.”

She closed the flask again but held onto it, passing it between her hands thoughtfully as they both waited – for what, he wasn’t sure. She still wasn’t looking at him, but he followed her gaze down to the burn marks that ran half-healed across the backs of his hands.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you in the hospital,” she said quietly.

“Ah, don’t be. I started it, and I was being…being a…”

“An idiot?” she suggested, a small smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.

“Yes, that.”

And they both laughed, the air lightening between them, and _this_ was what he had been missing. What was missing between him and Marian. Two minutes with Regina made him feel whole again, made him want to be reckless. To kiss her. To swear himself to her. To wrench out his own heart and give it to her, if only he knew how.

“How’s Roland?”

“Good, good. He’s still getting used to having a mother – he never really knew her, you know?”

Regina rested her hand on the bench next to his, leaving just enough space between them for it to feel like a physical blow.

“You’re doing the right thing,” she said, her voice gentle and knowing though it must have cost her to admit it, and he tried not to flinch at the words.

“That doesn’t mean I want to do it.”

“Robin…” She shook her head slightly, and he quieted. That was a road they couldn’t go down, too dangerous for both of them.

They lingered on the bench, though the sun was beginning to set and they both had people who would begin to wonder where they were. Regina was the first to stand, and she pulled Robin up behind her, walking with him to the line of trees that marked the boundary of the forest after reminding him that she could teleport herself home.

She looked up at him, hesitantly, through her lashes. “This park is one of the places I come to to clear my head. It’s quiet, and, well, I’ve come to rather like the forest. I hope you don’t mind?”

“I’ll look for you,” he said, and there was a weight behind those words, a gravitational pull, that settled around them both.

She reached up to stroke through his hair, her fingers catching in its tangles and making him suddenly aware that it had been days since he had last brushed it. He leaned into her touch, eyes closed, until her hand moved down to his cheek and she forced him to look at her.

“You need to take better care of yourself, Robin.”

Her tone was serious and tender and just the right amount of teasing, and he nodded, smiling a bit, because for her he would try. What they had between them was more than duty, more than love, and he worried he would drown in it, but not as much as he feared that he would never have the chance to – to give himself over completely.

That night he returned to Marian and let her lead him to their bed, and he wrapped his arms around her, and he slept.

In the darkness, he couldn’t tell who lay beside him.

In the oblivion that sleep brought, he couldn’t betray anyone.

He only prayed that if he called out in his dreams, he said the right name.


	3. the way you hold yourself straight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is growing far beyond the little one-shot I had planned it to be, mostly due to the enthusiasm it has received – so, thank you! I hope to continue to play with what the show gives us each week while adding my own take on Regina and Robin’s story. It will probably be a slow burn, as I don’t see a quick resolution to their relationship even with Marian being frozen. Expect a lot of angst, a lot of longing, and a lot of restrained romance. But Outlaw Queen is endgame, and we’ll get there sooner or later.

They walked down the street together, the image of a perfect family, but Robin knew it was not chance alone that had positioned Roland between them, making it so they could concentrate all of their attention on him instead of each other. He was more than content to let Roland take charge of pointing out the town’s landmarks to Marian, occasionally offering a correction or comment of his own but mostly allowing his mind to drift elsewhere.

They were passing the diner when Roland suddenly hauled himself forward, pulling away from Marian completely in his race to get to the window.

“Look, Daddy! Henry has the new _Thor_!”

Robin obediently peered through the glass to see Henry reading one of the comic books his son had quickly come to love in this world. Just as he leaned down to scoop Roland up and ask him again if he truly thought Thor and his companions could beat the Merry Men in a fair fight, his eyes stuttered over the woman sitting next to Henry, bent over a comic book of her own, and his hands dropped bonelessly to his sides.

To say Regina was _unrecognizable_ would be an exaggeration – he had made a thorough study of her, after all, across two worlds, and he would always be able to pick her out of the crowd in any room he entered – but it was a near thing. She looked, for perhaps the first time since he had met her, fundamentally unguarded. Gone was the severe clothing, the makeup, the elaborate pageantry she sometimes carried with her, and yet she was no less beautiful, no less desirable to him, with her casual t-shirt and vest and the simple way her hair gathered at the base of her neck.

She looked like a mother. Like a woman he wanted to come home to, stealing kisses from her in the doorway.

It was none of his business to analyze Regina’s choice of wardrobe – though he always had appreciated her style, her drama, her eye for detail – but he couldn’t help but wonder, perhaps selfishly, how much this sudden change had to do with them. With _him_ , particularly.

Roland brought Robin back to himself when he tugged at Robin’s hand again, asking if they could go in and read with Henry and his mom. The boy’s face was pressed up longingly against the window, and Robin felt a swell of shame and embarrassment as he realized his own position all but mirrored his son’s. He stepped away, knelt down to match his son’s height.

“Let’s not interrupt them now, Roland. I bet Henry will let you borrow _Thor_ later, if you ask him nicely.”

He was pitifully grateful for Roland’s chatter and the way he jumped from topic to topic. No sooner had he been led away from the diner’s window than he was begging for ice cream, and Robin was spared making awkward conversation with Marian. He glanced over at her, hoping the flush had faded from his cheeks, and found her face unreadable, lips pursed in thought but silent.

Shame touched him again as he imagined her watching her husband watch another woman, and he was glad that there was Roland and ice cream and a town meeting to occupy them – places where Regina would not tread, and he could play at being the dutiful husband that Marian so deserved.

He told himself it was more than duty that made him take Marian’s hand in his own.

…

He ran to Regina first.

It was natural, to seek help from the most powerful magic user in town – aside from Mr. Gold, who Robin didn’t trust to help even if he was ‘reformed’ these days – and no one questioned his instinct, though Mary Margaret had held his gaze a half-second too long before he left the room.

There was more to it than seeking help, Robin knew. He wanted Regina to comfort him, to tell him everything would be fine, to shoulder some of his burden, and he had no right to ask that of her, but ask it he would.

Seeing Marian fall, that awful moment when time slowed down and she seemed to hang in the air as he clutched at her, had brought back memories – he had been so much younger then, so hopeful – sickening enough to leave him swallowing back vomit as he called her name.

Marian had never been a strong woman, prone to illness even before Roland’s birth had almost taken them both. And now something else was threatening to take her away, and Robin could not have that. Their love was different now, there was no denying it, but still he would draw on all of the powers at his disposal just to keep her here.

He would not grieve her again. He would not have his son bury her, the mother he had finally come to know.

And so he burst in on Regina and asked for her help – without right, without hope, but with some sound of desperation splitting his voice down the middle. He saw something close off in her eyes, a shield coming down against him, but there was no hesitation in her as she shrugged into a coat and followed him, saying she’d do what she could.

…

_True Love’s Kiss_ whispered around the room like a refrain, an answer so simple that Robin half-wondered why the others had let him go to Regina in the first place if they were this confident his own magic would work. Still, he was relieved. He could give this much to Marian, at least – he was happy to give her this much, to pay so little to have her restored.

He lowered himself to Marian’s side, but he looked to Regina first, and, though he could read the hurt there, she met his gaze and did not look away. She nodded once, finally flicking her eyes down to the floor as if to give him privacy, and he tried to push down the flash that came to him then – a vision of Regina frozen in Marian’s place, the knowledge of what he would sacrifice to revive _her_ – and kissed his wife, waiting to feel her warm again under his touch, but there was nothing.

Nothing, and his heart bucked at the thought, for if their love had failed it was because his was no longer enough. He loved Marian the only way he knew how, and it wasn’t enough.

“So the cold is acting as a barrier?” he heard himself ask desperately, searching the faces of everyone in the room for confirmation that he was not the one who had been found lacking.

There was talk of different curses acting in different ways, the unpredictability of magic, and these people were not lying to him, he knew that, and yet they _were,_ and he could feel the truth of it seeping into him as he stared down at Marian. He had poured years of love and compromise and grief into her, he had shared himself with her, he had created a child with her – and he did not regret any of that, he would make the same choices a thousand times over – and now it all meant _nothing,_ because he could not save her, because even though he had chosen to honor her over the protestations of his heart, the breaking of the curse demanded a magnitude of love that was no longer his to give.

He was vaguely aware of the room emptying around him as the others rushed off with purpose, but he was locked in place beside Marian, unable to find his legs or his tongue and thinking only that he was glad Roland had been taken away and would not bear witness to the poor excuse for a husband, for a man, that Robin had become, if he could not even fit enough love into a kiss to pull a woman back from the brink of death.

Regina alone stayed, and a small part of him tracked her movements as she stalked through her old office, all business. She disappeared briefly behind the desk and reemerged with two thick books, a bottle, and a pair of tumblers, carrying the load back to Robin and settling on the floor next to him, a respectable distance away.

She poured an over-generous amount of whiskey into one of the glasses and forced it into his hand, sternly ordering _drink_ and watching until he took a sip before propping one of the books open in her lap and paging through it. He concentrated on the taste of the whiskey – a finer quality than any he had had before or likely would have again – knowing that they were drinking together now not because it was a thing they did but because Regina understood that the alcohol (its familiarity, its ritual) would steady him. He was grateful to have something to do with his hands, and so he sipped rhythmically and slowly came back to himself.

Regina was intensely focused on the book, running her fingers over the letters of a language he could never make sense of and occasionally reaching up to touch Marian’s hand, only to shake her head slightly and turn to a new page. Hair hung in her face where it had slipped free from her ponytail, and her mouth moved silently along with the words that she read. Watching her was easier than watching the ice thicken over Marian in increments, easier than remembering he was not innocent in all this, and so he watched and he drank while his wife grew colder beside them.

Regina sighed quietly, frustrated, and Robin leaned in to tuck a particularly wayward lock of hair back behind her ear. She startled under his touch and rocked her body away from him as he murmured an apology.

“Is there nothing you can do?” he asked, and she softened at his words.

“There…might be something. But only if you trust me completely.”

As if that was even a question, after all they had been through.

“I do.”

She sent Henry to collect the necessary materials and briefly outlaid her plan to Robin. He supposed he should be more horrified at the idea – Regina ripping out people’s hearts had been the stuff of nightmares for some time now – but there was a tidiness to the approach that he appreciated. If they couldn’t wake Marian, they could at least keep her alive and safe until a more promising solution presented itself. It was _something_ , and that was what Robin held onto.

The room felt newly awkward as they had nothing to do now except wait. Robin paced, and Regina moved to stand in front of the painting of birds that broke up the black and white lines of the room, frowning at it. She was offering him space he did not want, so he joined her, determined to break the oppressive silence between them.

“It really is quite hideous.”

Her lips quirked at the corner. “Care to tell Mary Margaret that?”

“Not especially, no.”

He could ask after Henry, or offer to vandalize the painting, or talk about comic books or a thousand other mundane things that would be appropriate with his wife lying not 10 feet away, but what came out of his mouth was something else entirely, something that had been niggling at his attention for hours.

“You’ve shrunk,” he said quietly, perplexed by both the truth of it and why he was bringing it up.

Regina looked rather pointedly at the near-empty glass in his hand, then back at him, and Robin fought the urge to roll his eyes.

“Sorry, what?”

“You, uh, used to come up to at least here.” He held his arm out, measuring, squinting slightly as he got the height just right.

“I don’t always wear heels, Robin.” There was something sharp in her voice, but when she looked down at their feet, he thought it might be self-consciousness.

“It’s different, that’s all.”

“Well, thanks for pointing that out. Want to talk about my hair too?”

There was a moment of tension before they both relaxed, glancing shyly at each other, and the small distance between them became something palpable.

He should stop talking, he knew, but being around Regina always brought out his recklessness, and he had been feeling untethered ever since Marian had fallen, and he needed to confess his guilt to someone. So he finished the whiskey in one swallow and cleared his throat, and the words left him in a ramble he had no control over.

“There’s a reason that kiss didn’t work. I’m in love with someone else.”

She stared at him – not even at him, but at an indistinct point on his chest – and a soft sound of disbelief broke from her as she asked, “You are?”

It was endearing, like so much about her today, and painful, because he never should have left her in doubt of that. He should have told her long ago, just to see her like this, the precious few seconds of transparency between them before she collected herself, arms crossed, and the necessary boundaries settled between them once more.

Regina had honor, too. She refused again and again to become the ‘other woman’ in this story, and he would not see her vilified either, in a conflict he had dragged her into. He loved her for her strength – always strong, stronger than him – and the integrity she forced him to keep.

One day, he would be able to touch her like he wanted to.

Henry returned with a box, and Regina looked askance at him again before plunging her fist into Marian’s chest. He flinched at the sound, louder and more violent than he had been prepared for, but then Regina pulled out Marian’s heart and he released the breath he didn’t know he had been holding in.

The heart was mercifully unfrozen, and he was stunned by its vibrancy, having grown used to the sight of Regina’s – blackened and weathered by grief and vengeance and _living_ – a heart he used to think of as _his_ when he felt it beating in the palm of his hand. And while he valued Marian’s purity, he knew which heart was more similar to his own.

Regina pushed Marian’s heart into his hands, as she had once delivered her own to him, and the air was charged despite the silence. _You cannot steal what has been given to you_ , he thought, and perhaps it wasn’t a crime at all, to love her, to love her, to love her as he did. 


	4. what it was to be

Visits to the little park became part of Regina’s routine. It was an easy way to fill hours, now that she was no longer barricading herself in her house and Mary Margaret had taken over all mayoral duties. It was far enough away from the center of town to make it unlikely that anybody would stumble upon her and disturb her when she wanted to be left alone. And, yes, it reminded her of Robin.

Archie would undoubtedly have something to say about symbolism and subconscious desires if he knew where she spent her afternoons, but there was nothing he could tell her that Regina didn’t already know. She had relinquished her claim on Robin – if not altogether graciously – and she had taken pains to remove herself from his daily life, but she would not apologize for holding onto one last fragment of their relationship: a weather-worn park bench flanked by wildflowers on one side and forest on the other, where the air hung heavy with earthy smells and memories of him.

Robin had only approached her once since their first meeting, though she would have sworn he came to the park almost as often as she did, merely waiting and watching from the shelter of the tree line. If she looked, perhaps she would have spotted him, but she was content to let him prowl, to be encircled by him like an animal in a snare, the feel of his eyes sending a prickle up her spine from afar.

On the day he came to her, his light step had purposely rustled the leaves behind her and announced his presence.

“Robin.”

“Regina.”

They spoke of Roland and Henry, of Elsa and the ice wall, and sat on opposite ends of the bench, both looking straight ahead but stealing glances at each other now and then. She was pleased to see that the shadows around his eyes had receded, though his body still carried a lean and hungry edge that marked his unrest.

No one could fault their conduct. They kept their distance. They weren’t lovers anymore, and Regina would never call them ‘friends’ – that word was too simple, too hollow – but they were still _something_. Despite the rawness of her loss, she found something like comfort in his nearness, and she suspected it was the same for him, as they both returned to that boundary between forest and field day after day, passing close without meeting, though they were hunters both.

Robin was made for the forest. It was written in his every action, clung to his skin no matter how many times he washed. She had mocked him for it, continued to do so long after she had discovered that the forest suited her, too. It was a place of wild things, of blood and smoke, where hearts could be buried or given freely, where more than kisses could be stolen under the dark awning of the trees.

Yes, it suited her very well, and that was why she returned: for Robin, and for herself.

…

She had a full ten minutes before she was scheduled to meet Henry at the diner, and she idled on the sidewalk, aware that turning up this early for her teenage son (who was bound to be running late anyway) after a week of absence reeked of desperation and embarrassing mom-ness. But there was nowhere else to be, so she put her head down and marched up the narrow path to Granny’s, nearly knocking into Emma as the other woman skipped down the steps with coffee in one hand and her phone in the other.

“Emma,” she said evenly.

They hadn’t seen each other since the night at the hospital, although Emma had tried to break down Regina’s door after receiving the first messenger crow that announced Regina’s intent to seclude herself while she dealt with the fallout from the ice cave, and Robin, and Marian’s return. It had been a surprisingly grand gesture from Emma, something straight out of a movie, and if her wide-eyed stare was any indication, Emma felt rather embarrassed about it now, in the light of day.

“Oh. Hi. You look different.”

“Your powers of observation never cease to amaze me.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Retract the claws, Regina. The last time I saw you, you were sick enough to agree to wear _my_ sweats – which I’d like back, by the way.”

“I only wore them because Henry made me. And then I burned them.”

“You did not.”

Regina sighed. “I’ll have Henry bring them to you next time. After I’ve washed them – a courtesy you did not extend to me, I might add.”

“How was I supposed to know you’d get yourself hospitalized and not have any of your own clothes to wear?” She waved a hand at what Regina was wearing. “I didn’t know you even owned a t-shirt.”

“What am I, a monster? Of course I own t-shirts. I do change my look from time to time, which is more than can be said for your boyfriend.”

Regina hoped the jab at Hook would distract Emma long enough to slip past her into the diner, but Emma just looked at her, hand on hip, clearly waiting for more of an explanation.

“Now that I’ve stepped down as mayor, I don’t see the need to dress quite as…professionally. Especially when I’m just spending the day with Henry.”

Emma nodded, a slight smile pulling at her lips. “It’s cute.”

“ _Cute_?” Regina repeated dangerously.

“What? That’s a compliment! You look cute, with your ponytail and your flats and…” She trailed off helplessly under the force of Regina’s displeasure. “Okay, you still terrify me even when you’re dressed like that. Happy?”

“That’s better.”

Emma leaned in closer, trying to read some of the titles Regina was carrying. “Are those comic books?”

“For our son, yes.”

She knew Henry was eager to catch up on the newer issues of _S.H.I.E.L.D._ and _Thor_ , and she had brought the first run of _All New X-Men_ for herself. She must have been gripping them a little too possessively because all of a sudden there was a sly, knowing glint in Emma’s eye.

“You got invested in the Battle of the Atom storyline too, huh? Have you gotten to the part where – ”

“Goodbye, Emma.”

She pushed past the blonde and threw open the door, hearing Emma call to her above the clatter of the bell.

“I want my sweatpants back, Regina!”

…

_Operation Mongoose_.

Henry’s reaction to her plan was more than she could have hoped for, and his insistence that she be the one to name their secret mission was pathetically gratifying. She couldn’t resist the urge to one-up the title of Emma’s original operation with Henry, sure that Emma would roll her eyes at it if she ever found out, provided she knew what a mongoose was.

That bit of awkwardness out of the way – admittedly, she had been about as subtle as an anvil in broaching the subject – Regina settled in to the _X-Men_ comic spread in front of her and drank her coffee, occasionally interrupted by Henry giving her updates about Thor’s latest battle against Malekith the Accursed.

The bell chimed behind them, and she saw Henry flick his eyes over to the door, the way his jaw suddenly tightened telling her exactly who had just walked in.

She turned slightly on her stool and caught sight of Robin’s stricken face, already making his way to her, and her body went numb. She knew that level of pain was reserved for only two people in this world – _though he had looked like that for her, once, his wild eyes burning her in the hospital, and_ –  and she wasn’t sure if she prayed or feared that it was for Roland.

“What – ”

“It’s Marian.”

She busied herself with a coat she didn’t need, apologizing to Henry, as Robin paced and rambled about magic and curses and ice. He said _please_ as if it strangled him, and he needn’t, for she would do anything for this man, even if that meant saving his wife.

…

The magic was unfamiliar to her, and powerful besides. Touching Marian with just a fingertip caused the chill to creep up her own arm with alarming efficiency, and she withdrew, aware of Robin frowning behind her.

There was little she could try without risking Marian’s safety further, to say nothing of her own. A quick glance at the Charmings and Emma confirmed that they had come to the same conclusion, and she wondered bitterly if they had guessed all along, only summoning her here to break the news to Robin, as if that would soften the blow.

It was cruel, to stand there and speak of True Love with the man who was supposed to be hers.

She watched him sink down at Marian’s side, watched him pull in a deep breath, and just before he leaned in, he looked back at her. His face was lined with guilt and worry, and she wanted so badly to be able to soothe him. He didn’t need her permission to kiss his wife, but she nodded anyway and looked down, as much for herself as for him, now regretting her decision to not wear heels today and feeling exposed and slightly ridiculous with her hair tied back and her bare arms.

She waited for sounds of cracking ice, for Robin to laugh as the meltwater soaked through his pants at the knees, for the happy sigh that was sure to fill the room as love broke the curse. But all she heard was Robin muttering _what am I doing wrong?_ , an outburst of possible explanations from all sides, and her own heart lurching painfully as it rose and fell at the same time.  

“So the cold is acting as a barrier?” Robin asked from the floor, his eyes over-bright and searching as he looked to all of them for help.

Regina didn’t trust her voice enough to reassure him, couldn’t quite push down the thought thrumming through her that Robin and Marian’s love wasn’t true enough to overpower the curse, and hated herself for finding even a measure of relief in that thought when Robin was so openly grieving in front of her.

The others left in pursuit of answers, and Robin didn’t move from his place at Marian’s side, though his legs shook with the effort of holding the half-crouch he had forced himself into. He didn’t respond when she said his name twice, and she sighed, wishing Emma or someone else had stayed behind to help her see Robin through the emotional shock.

She strode over to her old desk and emptied all of the folders and binders from one of its cabinets, feeling for the mechanism that opened a hidden compartment. The books and bottle of whiskey she pulled out were coated in a fine layer of dust – clearly Mary Margaret had not discovered them herself, not that she would know what to do with them if she had. Two glasses followed, and she returned to Robin with her hands full.

She filled one tumbler almost to the rim and closed Robin’s hand around it, saying _drink_ when he just eyed it vacantly. He took a sip, and his body relaxed slightly, moving away from Marian to rest more comfortably on the floor. Good. The whiskey would rouse him and give him something else to concentrate on while she worked.

She poured a much more modest amount for herself and cracked open the first volume in front of her. It was one of the more comprehensive magic books she owned, and though she held little hope for finding anything relevant in its pages, she searched for references to ice magic all the same. Her translation skills were rusty, and she soon found herself deeply absorbed in the work, absently picking up her glass or touching Marian’s hand to check the progression of the curse from time to time.

Robin inched closer, warming her side as he leaned in to read over her shoulder and exuding some of his old steadiness, but she paid little mind to him until his fingers brushed a loose strand of her hair back and she flinched away. It was a boldness she never would have expected from him, to touch her while his wife lay so close, and she turned angrily to remind him who he was.

“Is there nothing you can do?” he asked softly, brokenly, and she remembered that this was not about her.

“There…might be something. But only if you trust me completely.”

 “I do.”

His eyes were so blue, so deep when he looked at her and held no trace of judgment or fear when she told him she would rip his wife’s heart out to stop the ice from killing her.

She moved back to her desk to call Henry and instruct him on what she needed from her vault, all the while watching Robin pace distractedly, running a hand through his hair. He looked tired again, the shadows on his face deepening in the low light of the office.

The room seemed almost claustrophobic now, and she felt herself a voyeur to what should be private moments between husband and wife, even though Robin had been the one to invite her in. It would be over soon enough, and maybe she could salvage what was left of her day with Henry and drive away all thoughts of how steadfast Robin’s eyes had been when he said he trusted her.

She was drawn to the tasteless new painting that decorated the wall, the other oddity in the room, and stood before it frowning, pondering what she could leave in its place to annoy Mary Margaret the most.

“It really is quite hideous,” Robin said, and she smiled despite herself.

He had followed her without her noticing and seemed intent on having some sort of conversation with her, if only to break the lonely silence in the room. He fumbled through his words – though she could see that he was sober and thanked the gods that she hadn’t managed to get him drunk and even more vulnerable while they had been left alone together – and commented on everything from the garishness of the birds to her height. She didn’t know if she wanted to slap him or kiss him or, most likely, both.

And she could have written all of his ramblings off as the effects of grief and anxiety and several shots worth of whiskey until he cleared his throat and turned his damnably honest eyes on her again and said, “There’s a reason that kiss didn’t work. I’m in love with someone else.”

She didn’t miss the way he spoke it as a confession, like loving her was a sin even without factoring Marian into the equation, but there was no apology in his words or the way his hands turned to fists at his sides to stop himself from holding her then. She had known, she supposed, that he loved her, but she never thought to hear him say it aloud, not after all that had happened.

There was a low rushing noise in her ears as she blinked at him, and she scoffed, disbelief transforming into a hesitant smile halfway through.

She answered him with a question and a statement in one: “You are?”

“Yes.”

There was one glorious moment where she thought that might be enough, but she remembered Marian lying between them and crossed her arms protectively once more, relieved when Henry tramped into the room and prevented any more reckless talk of love and what might be.  

Regina punched through the ice covering Marian with a satisfying _crack_ – she’d wear bruises later, she imagined – and immediately the frost began to snake up her arm. She moved quickly, feeling for any hint of remaining warmth, and, there, she found it, the spark of heat and life that had gone untouched despite the virulence of the magic.

She closed her hand around it, cupping the heart gently, and thought of how simple it would be to crush the organ.

That was how the story usually ended, and she could feel her fingers tightening just a hair. How easy it would be to give in to her darker impulses, to seize control of her fate again, how _easy_ …and, yet, she didn’t particularly want Marian dead. Divorced from Robin, out of the state perhaps, but not dead. She would have let Elsa’s ice monster do the job for her weeks ago, if that was the case.

She extracted the heart carefully and forced herself to look at it, marveling at its brightness, so different from her own – it was beautiful, a heart worthy of love, of being cherished and protected – and she could not hate Robin for loving something so pure.

She would help him protect it.

She would help him save it.

And she would not flinch if he chose Marian over her again, for she knew what her own heart was. It was enough to know that he loved her, she thought, and she would not ask for more than that.

…

She saw Robin only sparingly over the next few days, usually walking with Roland and wearing a strained smile, one that never quite touched his eyes. She chased after them once, to give Roland the comics that Henry had finished reading, and Robin had looked at her so wonderingly as she knelt to show the boy what issues she had brought that she feared she had overstepped her bounds.

They caught her at the diner a few days later, and Roland pushed a small bundle of wildflowers into her hands before throwing his arms around her as far as they would go, thanking her for _Thor_ and the _X-Men_ after being prodded by his smirking father.

“Are these for me?” she asked Roland with a grin.

“Yep!” he chirped, already flying over to Henry to discuss the latest developments in the comics.

She examined the bouquet more closely, finding violets, dandelions, and bluebells in the mix of flowers – flowers which had unmistakably been gathered from the field that bordered the forest, next to her favorite park bench.  

Roland may have picked the flowers, but one look at the bundle showed that the colors had been thoughtfully arranged, the stems tied with a piece of leather, bent or imperfect blossoms removed until only the best remained, belying the kind of care a child would take.

One look at Robin, leaned casually against the door frame as he watched her, lips curled in the bare beginnings of a genuine and slightly crafty smile, confirmed all of her suspicions that Roland had been helped a great deal by his father.

“Flowers?” she asked playfully as she closed the distance between them.

“Well, he is quite taken with you…” Robin angled towards her, suddenly serious, “…and grateful, for everything you’ve done.”

“It was just a comic book, Robin.”

He sighed a little at her willful misinterpretation of his words. “It was more than that.”

He retrieved the short stack of comics from where they had been tucked under his arm, holding them out to her. Their hands met as she reached for them, and Robin’s fingers closed gently around hers, holding her there. He stroked his thumb over the bruises that ran along her knuckles. The contact was almost overwhelming, intimate despite its simplicity, and she kept her eyes fixed low on his body – on his chest, on the strong line of his arm, on the black edge of ink that peeked out from under his sleeve.

Everything smelled like forest.  

He nudged his arm against hers, and finally she looked up, up to his imploring, bottomless eyes, and she caught his meaning clearly – this, all of this, was hers for the taking.

And she would take it, after the danger had passed and after the ice had melted and after Marian.

She would take it. 


	5. different names for the same thing

Hands thrust deeply into his pockets against the chill in the air, Robin took the steps up to Granny’s two at a time and elbowed the door open. There were few customers this early in the morning, but Henry sat in one of the booths, backpack at his side and near-empty mug of hot chocolate in front of him.

Robin nodded to him and leaned against the counter as he waited for his coffee. He didn’t even have to order anymore. Stopping in for a quick caffeine fix had become part of his morning route into town, and if he sometimes caught a glimpse of Regina walking Henry to class or watched her nurse her own cup of coffee from across the diner, well, that was just extra incentive for rising early and patrolling the streets, always on the lookout for their elusive Snow Queen.

Ruby slid his coffee over to him with a knowing smile, and he took it quickly, burning his tongue to avoid having to say anything. Ruby’s grin widened as his eyes watered.

“Are you still in love with my mom?”

Henry spoke from directly behind him, and Robin nearly dropped his mug, hissing through his teeth at the shock and at his mangled tastebuds. He fought to lower it to the counter steadily before turning to face the boy.

“Shouldn’t you be in school now?”

Henry rolled his eyes, and it was startling to see how Regina’s expressions played over her son’s face sometimes. He had definitely picked up that _I’m-surrounded-by-idiots_ look from her. “I still have ten minutes.”

Robin ran a hand over his stubble, shifting his weight from foot to foot under Henry’s surprisingly intense scrutiny. “I’m not sure we should be having this conversation, Henry.”

“Please. I know Marian’s your wife, and you’re happy she’s not dead anymore, but we’ve all seen the way you look at my mom. There’s a reason your kiss didn’t break the curse.” Henry had stepped closer, lowering his voice, and his eyes were serious. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

Robin was convulsively squeezing his mug, so hot it was like a brand against his skin, and he remembered Regina’s magic burning through him, saving him, marking his hands. He found his tongue again, gritted out a short _yes_ and saw Henry’s satisfied smile.  “But it’s not that simple, Henry. I wish it was.”

“It _is_ simple. You love each other.”

Henry was holding himself like a man, and Robin respected that, but there were still so many traces of _boy_ on him – that gawky frame, that uneven voice, that belief that love, of all things, was simple. He remembered Henry’s icy glares, his set jaw, after Marian had first returned. The boy was intent on defending Regina, seeking to protect her from further disappointment and further hurt, and as much as Robin understood that, as much as he _valued_ that, he could not let the matter rest so readily.

“And what of Marian?” he asked more sharply than he had intended. “I love her still, and I have duties, as a husband and as a man.”

Henry was back to rolling his eyes, as frustrated with this conversation as Robin was. “Yeah, but you don’t _love_ love her. Marian’s true love is probably out there waiting for her, just like Mom’s waiting for you. It’ll be fine. When you’re meant to be with someone, you’re meant to be.”

Robin drank deeply from his mug. It still burned on its way down, black and bitter, but not as badly as before. Ruby had a habit of roasting the beans too long, and today he relished the way the coffee stayed heavy on his tongue. He was keeping his temper in check, but Henry’s presumption – that he knew anything about Robin, or Marian, or all three hearts at stake – grated, and he knew he was getting dangerously close to raising his voice, or stalking out of the diner before he said something he would regret. 

“You’ve read all the stories. Marian and I were ‘meant to be’ too, were we not?”

“This isn’t a story. Mom will find a way to fix Marian – she’s working on it right now. And then you’ll figure something out.”

Henry spoke slowly, as if Robin was a child who needed the ways of the world explained to him. “You have to.” A beat, as Henry found and held Robin’s gaze, his mouth a thin frown. “You can’t make her cry again.”

“I’ll try,” Robin said quietly and bit his tongue. It was not in his power to promise a thing like that. _Again_. He had never imagined Regina crying over him, though he knew he had wounded her deeply with his choices, and the thought twisted unpleasantly in his stomach.

“Hey, kid, you’ve got about thirty seconds to get to class. Better run.”

Emma and Hook stood in the doorway, cool air flooding in around them.

“I’m going, I’m going.”

Henry paused to shoot Robin one last significant look before rushing through the gap between his mom and the pirate, exchanging greetings and see-you-laters in one breath before he was out of sight.

“You looked like you needed a rescue,” Emma said as she and Hook settled themselves at a nearby table. The comment was friendly enough, but there was a certain tilt to her head, a look of appraisal in her eyes that betrayed her curiosity.

“A little too late for that, I’m afraid,” Robin muttered back.

Hook pulled Emma into conversation, and Robin kept them in the corner of his vision. They sat close, knees touching under the table, both of them grinning like fools. Emma threw a sugar cube at Hook’s chest when he waggled his eyebrows a little too suggestively, and even though their laughter was hushed, it echoed in the emptiness of the diner.

Robin pushed his mug around on the counter, shoulders hunched against their intrusive happiness. His mug left shallow trails of coffee behind it – it had overflowed or spilled at some point – and Robin drew his finger through them, tracing out a lazy pattern. When he dropped some coins on the counter and slouched back outside a few minutes later, he left behind a half-full mug of cold coffee and a series of streaky, drying Rs that made Ruby shake her head before she wiped them away.

The air in the center of town was warming with the sun, but Robin retraced his steps back to the forest, back to camp, where he would retrieve his bow and as many arrows as he could find.

This was a day for shooting things.

…

“Regina? You down here?”

Emma’s voice bounced around the little crypt, and Regina startled at the unexpected sound. She straightened, groaning when several joints creaked with the movement, checked her watch, and tried to count up the number of hours she had just wasted pouring over books that held no obvious answers.

Emma poked her head hesitantly around the corner, as if she thought the whole place might be booby-trapped and was amazed she hadn’t been shot with a poisoned dart yet. As if such Indiana Jones nonsense was Regina’s style.

“There you are. I brought coffee. And came to see if you were still alive, since you apparently haven’t moved for the past two days.”

“Thank you, Miss Swan.” She was grateful for the coffee, but Emma’s presence in this place, in this last stronghold of her old life, rubbed her wrong, and she fell back into the sneering, combative posturing she used to use so freely with the other woman, in the hopes that Emma would get the message and march back out as quickly as she had marched in.

“Whoa, _Miss Swan_? You haven’t called me that since the last time you went a little dark-sided.” Emma kicked at the pile of books and scrolls amassed at Regina’s feet. “Don’t tell me the evil mojo in this place is rubbing off on you.”

Regina sighed, closing her book with a decisive snap of her wrist. “Why is it that every time I want a little solitude, the town decides I’m evil again?”

“I was kidding. But you have to admit, bad things tend to happen when you retreat to the Batcave.”

“It’s a vault. Much nicer than a cave.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Emma looked thoughtful, meandering around the small space but touching nothing, and Regina wondered – not for the first time – how they had become something like friends. They still enjoyed baiting each other, but it was playful instead of vicious (most of the time), and they had finally learned how to share Henry (again, most of the time). Emma was surprisingly easy to talk to, and she was, perhaps, just the barest bit less boneheaded than the rest of the town.

And if Emma had ruined Regina’s second chance at love, Regina supposed she had ruined Emma’s life, and a fair few others’, first.

“Sooooo, uh, Henry may have confronted Robin about his intentions towards you at the diner yesterday.” The words came out in a rush, as Emma focused on a small vial of griffin’s blood instead of Regina.

“He didn’t,” Regina managed to grit out before burying her face in her hands in embarrassment. “Tell me he didn’t.”

“Oh, he did.” Emma cringed sympathetically. “If it makes you feel better, I think Robin passed the test.”

“And where the hell were you when this happened? Too busy preening with that ridiculous pirate of yours?”

She was snarling again, but Emma just blinked at her, one hand settling impatiently on her hip.

“Uh, last time I checked, Henry didn’t require 24/7 surveillance. The kid cares about you, wants you to be happy. He would have gone to Robin eventually, even without the Marian conundrum.”

_That you caused_ , Regina thought bitterly, and scowled.

“It’s not that big of a deal, Regina. Everyone knows how you and Robin feel about each other –”

“Don’t,” Regina snapped, holding up a hand to cut off the blonde. “We’re _not_ talking about what is or is not between Robin and I.”

“Fine. But you’re sure spending a lot of time trying to save his wife, and that says it all, doesn’t it?”  Emma sighed, resigned. There had been hardly any bite to her words, but they needled Regina all the same. “Any progress?”

“None.” She tried to swallow down her anger, reining herself back to an acceptable level of disdain. “Maybe if we had more information about the Snow Queen I could find something, but I guess I can’t expect you to actually do your job.”

“We’re trying, okay? For someone who leaves big snail-trails of ice behind her wherever she goes, she’s surprisingly sneaky.”

“We don’t even know what she wants. Why did she freeze Marian, of all people?”

Emma shrugged. “Beats me. But I’m not sure it’s something you should be losing sleep over.”

“It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“I can think of a lot of things you’d be better off doing than locking yourself away down here. Like eating. Or sleeping.”

“I’m fine.”

To prove her point, she waved her hand and was suddenly surrounded by half of the contents of her refrigerator. She smirked at how impressed Emma looked – it was a simple relocation spell, hardly worth commenting on – but, truthfully, she couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten, and a vicious headache was starting to make itself known, pounding above her left eye in time with her heartbeat.

“Well, Henry seems to think differently,” Emma said mildly, plucking some grapes out of the pile of food.

“Well, Henry should stop running his mouth about things he doesn’t understand.” Regina sighed.  “Charming family trait, I suppose.”

“You could at least help us look for the Snow Queen. It’d probably be good if we had some fire magic on hand when we do find her. You know, keep us from freezing to death, torture the information out of her…”

Regina arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

“No! Jesus, you got _way_ too excited about that. I knew this place was rubbing off on you.” Emma held out a hand to her. “C’mon. Let’s get you back above ground before you try to end the world again.”

Regina looked down at the book in her hands, at the shelves and chests full of materials she hadn’t even touched yet, but Emma was already pulling at her, shaking her head when Regina opened her mouth to protest.

“Seriously, this vault is depressing.” She wrinkled her nose. “And it smells kind of weird.”

Regina allowed herself to be dragged upright, reordering the mess that she had made with another casual wave of her hand, mostly just to see Emma’s eyes bug out again.

They were halfway out the door when Emma said, slyly, “Robin might be there – he’s been helping us out on patrols.”

Regina told herself it was just two days’ worth of neglect finally catching up with her that made her feel so lightheaded, heat rising through her at the thought of working alongside Robin, and she walked a little faster, passing in front of Emma before she gave herself away completely.

“Clearly I should have just led with that,” the blonde huffed in frustration, slamming the vault door behind them with enough force to make them both cringe as the metal clanged and echoed around them. “Could’ve saved myself twenty minutes of breathing ‘essence of dung beetle’ or whatever it was down there.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Regina Mills, you just went weak-in-the-knees when I said Robin’s name. There – you did it again! You’re blushing!”

“Says the woman who wore a pink prom dress on her first date with Captain Hand.”

Emma’s mouth dropped open. “What? How did you – that dress – I mean, what?”

Regina snorted. “Your mother has been shoving that _charming_ polaroid into everyone’s face. Belle’s been cornered at least three times, poor girl.”

“Oh my god, I’m going to kill her.”

Regina patted Emma consolingly on the back. “I’ve had quite a lot of experience in that regard, should you be looking for any advice, dear.”

 


	6. can't steal his heart (but I can steal back mine)

Five minutes after entering the forest, Regina was sure she was being tracked.

It was no more than a prickle at the back of her neck and a sense of movement behind her, a watchful – protective, maybe – presence, and for once she didn’t bother to run through the list of enemies who might go to the trouble of setting up an ambush for her. It was _him_.

It had been days since she had last seen Robin, days that had blurred together in the solitude of her vault, and yet she could remember their last set of interactions with embarrassing clarity. The way he had said _I’m in love with someone else_ , his hand touching her hand in the diner, the little bundle of wildflowers that held so many shades of blue and still didn’t come close to matching the color of his eyes.

Those had been the moments she had almost believed they stood a chance.

Robin was so earnest, so strangely gentle and sure-handed in his continued pursuit of her, and for one delirious second it hadn’t seemed crazy to think about a future with him. She would find the Snow Queen, she would save Marian, and Robin would find a way to leave his wife. Surely Marian would want to free herself from an indifferent marriage, too – she deserved more, as they all did, so much more.

But a dark practicality had taken root somewhere deep inside Regina, replacing every hope with the knowledge that love was wonderful and powerful and guaranteed absolutely nothing. It wasn’t enough, _she_ wasn’t enough, and that knowledge weighed on her until she was falling, like Icarus daring to reach for things she had no right to, and burning for it. Despite everything Robin said, every touch and look and offering they stole from each other, he would choose Marian and Roland and the forest every time, he _had_ to, just as she would choose Henry if it came down to that.

She had waited until nightfall to let Sidney guide her to the Snow Queen, going out of her way to strike quickly at a time when no one would think to interrupt her. This was the kind of self-sabotage that really didn’t call for witnesses. She was steeled for a fight that would be a loss for her no matter the outcome, and all she wanted to do was take the other woman down and go home before anyone made the mistake of calling her heroic. It wasn’t _heroic_ to rescue the wife of the man she loved while clinging to that small, carefully concealed dream that Robin would still, somehow, return to her as soon as Marian awoke. It was a means to an end. It was pathetic.

She had watched the wildflowers grow a little limper, then brittle, in their vase day after day, unable to bring herself to throw them away. The colors were fading, and there was a bitter beauty to it all, to this last piece of Robin she held onto as they worked to break each other again in the name of doing _right_.

Regina didn’t need Robin’s help now, she didn’t need his guilt and his wistfulness and the temptation he kept holding out to her, and she certainly didn’t need to see him reunited with his wife yet again.

It was the thought of him returning Marian’s heart to her chest, his hands as tender and uncertain as they had been when handling her own – and, oh, how cruelly their lives were mirrored sometimes – that stopped her short in the woods, one hand coming to rest expectantly on her hip.

She stared straight ahead, irritation radiating out around her as she snapped to the empty air, “Taken up stalking, have you?”

She heard him land lightly on the ground some distance behind her, leaves rustling under his boots as he moved closer.

“Merely checking that our borders are safe, m’lady.”

The use of her old title rankled Regina further, and she turned on him, sharp words already primed on her tongue, only to find that he was standing barely an arm’s length away. He liked to creep up on her, always had, and now it seemed a more dangerous habit than ever.

The moonlight was strong enough for her to see him clearly: cheeks rough and reddened from long hours of exposure to the cold, breath misting the air between them, a hesitant but slightly amused smile upturning one corner of his mouth.

Sometimes it felt like they had never left the Enchanted Forest, the way they always circled back to those old, relatively simple days: meeting under the trees, sniping at each other and pretending it was nothing more than their reluctant alliance that left him constantly at her heel, insisting on calling each other _m’lady_ and _thief_ long after they had reason to be formal with each other, long after the edge between them softened into something verging on playful – and they were fools, the both of them.

“You,” she began before immediately losing what she meant to say. “…You could move your men into town, you know. It’s a lot warmer there.”

She turned her attention to one of the trees hemming them in, pointedly studying the bark as she cursed herself for stating the obvious and for letting her anger fall away under his scrutiny instead of shielding her like it was supposed to.

He cocked his head towards her in an attempt to catch her gaze again. “This is not the first winter we’ve weathered out-of-doors. We’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think you’ve weathered one quite like this.”

Robin merely shrugged one of his shoulders, and Regina sighed in exasperation.

They had both nearly frozen to death not that long ago, and that was before the Snow Queen had shown up and considerably escalated the danger for everyone. She didn’t think Robin needed to be reminded about that night in the hospital or the currently-petrified state of his wife, but if he continued to be so flippant about the situation, well…

“Do you always wander alone after dark, or is it concern for our safety that brings you to the woods tonight?”

He was careful to stress the _our_ , but the teasing lilt he used suggested that he thought something much different, like he had caught her out on a personal mission, and Regina wanted to hurt him suddenly, to drive him back to the warmth of his camp where those too-understanding eyes couldn’t reach her.

“I know where the Snow Queen is. I’m going to make her reverse whatever she did to Marian.”

She delivered the words coldly and watched as his face fell, an inarticulate sound pushing out of him as if she had struck him in the chest. The air fogged between them again, in a rush of breath so large he must have emptied his lungs completely. And that was the difference between them, Regina knew: he wounded her accidentally, regretfully, while she sought out his vulnerable points and pressed in, telling herself that she must, that she needed to drive him away if they were all to survive this.

She took the opportunity to break away from him, spinning vaguely in the direction that Sidney had given her, and startled when Robin’s hand caught at her arm, holding her in place.

“You’re not going alone, are you?”

He had gathered himself remarkably quickly, but he was still breathing heavily, his voice sounding slightly strangled from the lack of oxygen.

“Your arrows aren’t exactly helpful against magic.”

“Yes, but…you still need someone to watch your back.”

“I can watch my own back.”

“Can you?”

Robin pulled himself closer to her, standing with his chest just barely pressed against her shoulder blades, and Regina warmed all over. His hand moved to her upper arm, guiding her to turn into him – and then they were both turning, sharply, as something crashed through the bushes behind them.

Robin stepped forward, crossbow leveled in the direction of the disturbance, and used his body to shield her in a way that had her rolling her eyes – hadn’t they _just_ had a conversation about how useless his weapons were in comparison to magic?

A familiar blonde head weaved into sight, and Emma stumbled to a halt, arms raised defensively, when she saw the arrow pointed at her chest.

Regina barely suppressed a groan as she said, “See? I won’t be going alone.”

That damnable woman would follow her whether she liked it or not, and, truthfully, Regina was almost grateful for her sudden appearance. She could make her escape from Robin, who now had no reason to follow her himself, and she could decide how to best rid herself of Emma on the way to the Snow Queen. There were several cliff faces that a clumsy woman might plausibly fall off of, and no one in their right mind would ever describe Emma Swan as ‘graceful.’

Emma was still staring at them in confusion, though Robin had lowered his crossbow. Regina walked away, hearing Emma and Robin exchange a few words behind her and then the soft pounding of boots against earth as Emma jogged to catch up with her.

They fell into step together, and the blonde was unusually quiet for almost five minutes before she said, frowning slightly, “I thought things were going better with Robin.”

“Define ‘better,’ Miss Swan. Really, I’m curious to know what you think could be going well when Marian has been reduced to an ice sculpture decorating Town Hall.”

“I just thought – ”

“Don’t.”

“Okay, no talking it is, then.”

…

They were no closer to stopping the Snow Queen or reviving Marian, so Regina continued to isolate herself in her vault and pore over spell books written in no fewer than eleven dead languages, though the exercise seemed increasingly pointless. The answers they needed couldn’t be found in books. But the research provided her with a convenient excuse for avoiding everyone in town, particularly Robin, and so she cracked open volume after volume and read until her eyes ached in the dim lighting.

One afternoon she found herself dozing off, and the dreams came – Robin waiting on their bench, Robin tightening his fingers around her heart little by little until it crumbled, Robin kissing Marian then kissing her, Marian laughing as Regina slowly froze over, Robin lying frozen at her feet – and by the time she roused herself, the book of blood magic she had been holding was burning in her hands, flames licking their way over every page and inching towards her skin.

She dropped the book with a start and, still dazed, was halfway to pulling out her own heart before she realized what she was doing. She let her hand relax but didn’t remove it from her chest. It would be so easy to crush her heart or bury it here, among all the other meaningless trophies she had collected throughout the years, relics of all the lives she had ruined. Not that she really wanted to do either of those things, but it was becoming more and more obvious that she couldn’t go on like this.

She was tired of books that held no answers, she was tired of Robin saying things he shouldn’t, she was so _tired_ , and the way out was staring her in the face. She knew how this world worked. Robin would protest, of course. It would hurt him, too, but only for a time. He had so much waiting for him – his wife, his son, his men, his forest, all needing him – and she had nothing in comparison. Being cut in half was better than the slow torture of being pulled in so many different directions at once.

No more visits to the bench. No more flowers. No more shared smiles or touches or glances. No more Robin, full stop.

Her hand didn’t shake as she lowered it back into her lap, her heart still beating in its proper place though her emotions seemed muted all the same. Perhaps she could attribute it to the numbing effects of exhaustion or denial, but truthfully she knew – had known, all along – that she could do what Robin never could.

This was her specialty, after all: driving others away, isolating herself, twisting any love people might waste on her into feelings of indifference or fear or hate. She could do all of these things and walk away from it, damaged but alive, and everyone around her would carry on with the lives they were meant to have.

Storybooks and their pages full of pretty things had never been meant for her. With her, there was no happy ending, no forever, no love that didn’t exact the highest price.

…

Regina nearly lost her resolve when she spotted him. There were too many people around, for one thing, and he was already wearing that apologetic, wounded look that made it so hard not to reach out a hand and smooth away the worry lines on his face.

He walked a half-step behind her, speaking low and urgently, and she brushed him off, determinedly looking everywhere but at him. Emma intercepted Robin with questions about suspicious activity and how long his men had been standing guard over the ice cream truck, and Regina scrambled away. She drew a questioning, then sympathetic, look from Hook as she stood beside him, positioning as many bodies as she could between Robin and herself.

The raid on the truck was another disappointment. More clues that the Snow Queen had taken an odd interest in Emma much earlier than they had thought, but nothing to give them a clear picture of what she was up to. Regina lingered in the back of the truck as long as she could, but the already claustrophobic space was made even more uncomfortable when Emma and Hook went back to making eyes at each other over her head. She excused herself with a sigh and stepped out, bracing herself for what was to come.

Robin bounded over and trailed at her elbow as she led him away from the others, frustration underwriting every word, every movement, as he tried to speak to her again. Suddenly he ducked in front of her, fighting for the eye contact she had denied him for days, and she gave it to him, unflinchingly, if only because she needed him to understand that she meant every word she was about to say.

“You know you can tell me anything.”

Now that she was looking at him, she couldn’t stop her eyes from skipping over all the odd details that made up the man in front of her – the stray pine needles clinging to his shoulders and embedded in the fabric of his vest, that one lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead, the burgundy scarf that she was fairly certain had belonged to her at one point (one more thing he had stolen from her, this one at least safe in his keeping) – and each detail unlocked something else she had tried to forget about him until she was flooded with half-remembered conversations, the familiar sound of his footfalls following hers, the taste of whiskey, all shades of blue and green, slow kisses and fire.

It was too much, but the words came anyway, and she didn’t choke on them.

“If you truly want to save Marian –” Regina wouldn’t say _love_ though she could read it in him, that extra flicker of pain when anyone spoke Marian’s name aloud. She tried to summon up her old cruelty, the pleasure she had taken in hurting others for sport, but there was nothing pleasurable about this.

“You’re going to have to forget about me and find a way to fall in love with your wife again.”

That was the most cruelty she could deliver, throwing his vows and divided heart back into his face, and she saw it hit its mark as he jerked back from her, looking stunned. But the words bit at her too. She knew all too well that Robin had never stopped loving Marian – the love had changed, mellowed over years of absence – but its root was strong, impenetrable.

Robin’s eyes searched hers desperately, waiting for her to say something more, to give a different answer, almost imperceptibly shaking his head in refusal.

She stepped around him, and he didn’t follow.

She waited until she was out of sight, tripping through the undergrowth in her haste to escape, before she teleported back to her house. She had meant to land in her study but ended up in the kitchen instead, and she thought, vaguely, that she was lucky she hadn’t gotten lost somewhere between worlds, trying to use magic in her current state.

The withered bundle of wildflowers, pathetically small in the glass that held them, sat directly in front of her. She gathered them carefully in her hands, accounting for every petal, every stem, before she crushed them in her fists, grinding them easily into dust.

It was not so different, Regina found, from pressing the life out of a heart and watching the fragments sift through her fingers to the floor.

…

He came back.

He came back, speaking of love and complications, his sleeve rolled up to expose the tattoo that supposedly bound them together as they took turns snapping at each other. He clearly wanted to shake some sense into her, or strangle her, and she barely restrained herself from throwing her heaviest book at his head to stop him from cornering her.

She pushed past him, driven out of her own vault because there simply wasn’t enough room to _breathe_ with him down there, and heard him growl bitterly in her wake, “It’s no secret you spend all your time in this damned tomb. If you mean to run away from me, perhaps you should find a better hiding place.”

When he showed up again, two days later, she wondered if she should have taken his advice after all and saved them both the trouble of doing this dance again. She barely had time to look up from Henry’s book before he was there, kissing her, hands locking her in place though there was no need – she responded with the same hunger even as she cursed them both for their stupidity, for the ruination of everything she had worked for.

Robin stood, and she rose with him, held too tightly against his body to resist even if she had wanted to.

The kiss was all sharpness – teeth and stubble and whiskey on his tongue and hands grappling for leverage – and it was so unlike the Robin she knew, this animal she had glimpsed so rarely, the dark in him finally seeking out the dark in her.

She had taken this good man and corrupted him, and she would not apologize for it, not for as long as he chose her, as he did tonight.

This was _them_ , and she had never been more sure that they belonged to each other, or more aware of the wrongness of it all, the sickening aftertaste that was sure to haunt them both as soon as they realized what they were doing.

If he would let her breathe, just for a moment, she would pull away, she _would_ , but his mouth moved against her mouth, his hands pinned her to him, and every piece of her came alive under his touch, and it was everything, and it was endless. 


	7. something of a thrill

Regina walled herself away, watched as the ripples of magic closed around her, and though she knew it to be impenetrable – it _had_ to be, or they were all lost – it looked impossibly flimsy as she stood before it now. She shouldn’t have left it so late, only seconds before the storm crashed down and she sparked off like lightning, but she had needed to see to Henry, had needed to warn off Robin and his men _again_ , long after she had hoped to find them scattered and disarmed. Robin’s insistent trust in her had been touching – far more than that, really – but there was fearlessness, and there was stupidity, and Robin’s actions had veered dangerously towards the latter as he had lingered to kiss her once more, carefully netting his fingers in her hair, holding her there, until she had run from him for both their sakes.

He thought he had seen her at her worst, perhaps, but he had never seen _her_.

How foolish they were (how foolish she was) to think that the Queen had been vanquished, that Regina had changed so much as to drown out her darkness entirely, as if the two did not share a heart, and a mind, and a terrible power. She was a different woman now, she could fear the Queen as much as them, and yet the storm was coming, its electricity pricking at the hairs on the nape of her neck, its sly fingers seeking out the remnants of anger and vengeance that still nestled around her heart and jolting them into wakefulness.

_Don’t be scared_ , she had told Henry, and her voice had trembled, and they had both known the truth, though Henry had nodded and hugged her like the brave boy he was, like the _believer_ he was.

He should be afraid. Oh, they all should be.

Because her heart was still black, because she really had never learned her lesson, because some part of her (however small it might be) would _enjoy_ this – the destruction and the blood, the casting off of her restraints.

Heat rose along her spine, filling her until she could take no more, spilling over into the air as she shivered into nothingness, into lightning that broke open the sky, and she rose with it.

She was the storm.

…

Swan fled into the night, and the Queen followed, thinking only how sweet it would be to corner mother and daughter together and end them at last. Yes, there would be blood tonight.

Swan’s footsteps faded to a distant beat – she had a solid start, though she would not be able to run forever, and the Queen always had enjoyed the hunt almost as much as the kill – and the Queen slowed her own pace, drinking in the wildness of the night. The moon gave eerie light to the strand of trees that ran against her father’s mausoleum, making them look half-alive, and the Queen found herself staring even before she heard the rustle of movement (and a voice, unintelligible but with the soft edge that usually accompanied cursing) among them.

Someone else was out there. Someone else walked the night, and Snow and her daughter could wait just a bit longer, for the Queen would meet this interloper first – as if she _knew_ , as if she tasted him somehow, bittersweet against her lips, before the rest of her could even name him – and there he was, jerking futilely against the ropes that bound him to the oak and cursing in his struggle. One wrist bent awkwardly, the dagger glinting silver when it caught the moonlight, as he tried to saw through his restraints, and he was shaking with the effort, and how she delighted in seeing him defeated like this.

“Thief,” she greeted, and his eyes snapped up to meet hers, alarmingly blue despite the poor light. “Your powers of concealment leave something to be desired.”

He sneered at her in turn, stilling his hands, though she could see him panting from exertion. “I have no desire to hide from you.”

“Oh? Felt like spending some quality time with that tree, then?” she offered. “No wonder you always smell like forest.”

He leaned his head back against the tree, sighed in mock dismay. “Oh, how you _wound_ me, _m’lady_ ,” the title as cutting on his tongue as it had been in those early days, and she frowned at his insolence.

“What are we to do with you, thief? You’re just so…helpless.”

“Perhaps you should free me and see how helpless I am.”

His voice was dangerous, the animal in him peering out of the cage he meant to contain it in, and this was what they had always been, fire and water, each trying to consume the other, each battling back a hunger that, tonight, could finally be set loose.

She had been closing on him this whole time, inch by inch circling forward and thinking of how she could burn him at last, burn the blue right from his eyes – and it was tempting (oh, how she wanted him to feel her magic, her fire, in him again) but she was one for blood, and so was he, and it would be far more amusing to gut him with his own blade, the one he held now like a ward between them.

“I know what kind of man you are – you can’t fight, you can’t make up your mind, you can’t kiss your own _wife_ , and that pesky code of yours, well…”

“Do not speak of Marian,” he gritted through his teeth.

“Someone ought to. Poor girl.”

He barked out a bitter laugh, falling slack against the tree in his fit of humor. “You speak of love – you! Have you ever known a man without taking his heart first, and bending him to your will?”

She took the final step to close the distance between them, one hand tangling with his and, with a wrench, twisting the dagger out of his hand. “How soon you forget. Or does your ‘honor’ prevent you from admitting pleasure, from acknowledging that it was _you_ who came to me?”

“Neither of us has honor, lady; let us not mistake that,” he said, unblinking, as if he was not even aware that he had been disarmed.

“Then let neither of us play the victim.”

“If we are weighing our crimes against one another, you must admit that I have the better claim.”

“And who are you but a man who steals, who breaks his vows, who lets his wife grow cold while he shares the bed of another? Yes,” she said quietly as she bared her teeth in a vicious, triumphant smile. “I could show you the color of your heart, thief.”

Her hand splayed over his chest, the pads of her fingers poised to sink through skin and blood and bone, as she locked eyes with the outlaw. He had not flinched away from her threat or her touch, and he looked back at her now defiantly, lazily, and she might have missed the fatal gleam of curiosity in him if his gaze had not flicked down to where her hand joined them together, his teeth digging slightly into his bottom lip with something like anticipation.

Her grin widened. “Would you like to see?”

“Does the Queen ask permission for anything?” he said, and that was all she needed to act, fingers digging into his core as he gasped, little noises that sounded almost like laughter, and how like a thief to laugh in the face of his death.

She pulled it from him, the pulsing redness of it fitting easily into her hand, and held it up between them for inspection. It was far redder than her own – she suspected everyone’s was, save for the Imp’s, if what he had could even be called a heart – but there were twists of black through it, threads of corruption, that he seemed equally fascinated by, and they were not so different after all.

“A bit bruised around the edges,” she said, waiting until his eyes traveled back to hers. “Like mine.”

“I’m nothing like you,” he bit back, but there was no venom in it, no conviction, and he looked at her with all of his hunger, dipping his gaze to the low neck of her dress and the skin that lay open to him there.

“Is that what you tell yourself?” She applied the barest pressure to his heart (imagined crushing it) until he groaned, then held it to his chest once more. “Take your heart back, thief. I have no use for it.”

“Nevertheless, it is yours, m’lady.”

She pressed the heart back into him, feeling him buck against her touch as it settled again, both of them slightly breathless as she whispered, “Show me.”

She took the dagger to his bonds, working the blade under and over layers of rope as she leaned into him, fitting their bodies together in increments, claiming him in inches.

“I expect you’ll want the use of your hands,” she hissed to him, and he growled in agreement.

She nicked him across the hip as she worked, then cut into the exposed skin of his wrist – shallowly, purposefully, just enough to see him bleed. If his tattoo hadn’t been hidden under his shirt, she would have cut that too, removed it as easily as a heart and freed them both from this folly, this play at _love_ , when they both belonged to the night, and to the hunt.

She had the mad urge to lick his blood where it edged the dagger, but then the last threads of rope had fallen from him, and he was on her, forcing her back and around until she was pinned between him and the tree.

He bent her back against it, the dagger lying half-buried where it had fallen between them, and set his lips, then his teeth, against the thin, unprotected skin of her throat.

“Have you forgotten what a thief does, Queen?” His breath curled warmly around her ear, and her hands clenched into the fabric at his shoulders, biting into the muscle beneath.   _Blood for blood_ , she thought dizzily, as he lowered his head again. “He  _takes_.”

…

Regina remembered being pushed against the tree, remembered reversing their positions again, using the tree as leverage against Robin until something rocketed into the back of her head and grounded her, blood and something sharper trickling down her neck, past her ears, as angry voices rose in the background.

She remembered different hands on her throat – _surprisingly gentle_ , she had thought, _for a murder_ – and heavy breathing, the sounds of a fight, darkness. She remembered flashes of movement, colors flying past, everything muted and garbled as a dream.

She remembered hands in her hair, and beeping, its rhythm hanging somewhere between soothing and annoying, and that’s how she knew she was waking up, that prickle of irritation that ran through her as the regrettable familiarity of the hospital set in.

When she finally managed to unstick her eyelids and blink through the glare of light that assaulted her, she saw Robin sitting beside her bed, drowsing, one side of his face already purpling and his arms crossed tightly over his chest. Conspicuously not touching her. Conspicuously keeping his distance.

Of course. He was horrified by what she had done, what she had said to him, and she turned her head away (ignoring the ache, ignoring the nausea that rolled up – this wasn’t her first concussion, she knew the signs) as she tried to piece together the blurred and darkened parts of her memory, searching for the moment where she had ruined it all, where she had hurt him enough to drive him away, heart sinking all the while.

“Regina?” Her movement, slight as it was, must have woken him, and now there was a gentle hand on her arm, his voice pitched low with concern.

“If I didn’t know any better, thief, I’d say you’re determined to send me to the emergency room every time we find ourselves alone,” she deadpanned, turning back to him reluctantly and looking past him, over his shoulder, rather than at him.

Robin chuckled, a warm and affectionate sound that set her pulse skyrocketing again, and she was thankful that, in his distraction, Robin was paying no mind to the monitors in the room, the sharp uptick in blips giving her away at once.

“In this case, I think we can pin most of the blame on Little John. And a considerable amount of barley wine,” he said lightly, stroking his fingers all the way down her arm to where they settled protectively over her hand. “One bottle of which, uh, made spectacular contact with the back of your head.”

That explained the blood, and the sensation of people picking through her hair, she thought, and scowled. Glass was a bitch to extract from fabric, and hair was even worse.

“Are you all right? I mean, is there anything I can do for you?” Robin began to ramble, standing and looking around at the mess of wires and machines in the room – more than half of them not even connected to her – as if he could sort them himself if he stared hard enough. “Do you remember what happened?”

“I rather wish I didn’t,” Regina mumbled, fixing her gaze on the ceiling tiles, choosing their grey over the blue of his eyes, over his kindness.

“What – ” The bed dipped under his weight as he sat, drawn down to her hesitancy, and she snapped.

“I _told_ you to get as far away from my vault as possible. Do you know what I could have done to you?”

“I’d say I have a pretty good idea, considering how we spent the last few hours.”

“You’re unbelievable,” she said quietly, turning from him again, unsure if she was angrier with him or with herself.   

“Regina,” he said, and though his voice was exasperated, his hands were nothing but gentle as they guided her back to face him, resistant as she was, nearly keening in distress. “Look at me, _please_.”

He waited until her eyes rose, and let his fingers wander in her hair, pulling on strands, twisting them, like an insistent little boy. “I wasn’t afraid of you then, and I’m not afraid of you now.”

She made as if to interrupt, and he carried on, desperately this time. “Do you think any less of me after seeing me under the curse?

“No,” she whispered, “but – ”

“No,” he echoed, “and why should I think any less of you? I know who you are, Regina Mills, and I intend to have you.”

There was a gleam in his eye as he said it, thief that he was, and she loved him for it.

There was more to talk about (there always was) and more to ask pardon for, more things she would beg to hear told from his perspective – had she licked his dagger at some point? – but for now she smiled, the playful, snaring smile that had always belonged to the Queen, and asked, “Do you, now?”

“Yes, m’lady, if it pleases you,” he replied with a smirk of his own.

She reached to touch his cheek, stubble bristling along her palm, and raised a questioning eyebrow as she examined his bruises in the yellow light of the hospital room.

“Things got a bit tetchy after John struck you – impressive aim, really, for a man that deep in the barrel.” He caught her hand as she swatted at him, covering her in kisses up to her wrist as she struggled to maintain her glare until they were both laughing too hard to go on.

“I got off easy. John, on the other hand, won’t be forgetting this particular transgression any time soon.”

Regina looked at him sharply, intrigued, but just then someone hm-hmmed from the doorway, and she and Robin turned to meet Mary Margaret’s beaming face.

“The doctor’s going to see if he can discharge you now, Regina, and I know Henry’s waiting to talk to you, so…”

Robin took that as his cue to leave, murmuring “I need to check on Roland anyway. I’ll stop by later, okay?” as he nuzzled their foreheads together, slipping one last kiss in over her ear.

The loss of his body heat had Regina shivering, pulling at the blanket that she must have kicked off earlier, and Mary Margaret hurried over to help her, taking up Robin’s position next to her on the bed as they waited for the doctor to come in.

“Robin cut quite the romantic figure dashing down the street with you in his arms, calling for help.”

“Don’t,” Regina grumbled, though the image had her biting her tongue to suppress a smile and thanking the gods that she was not the blushing type.

Mary Margaret – weirdly perceptive, sometimes, for someone so lacking in subtlety – grinned at her, clearly waiting for more details of what had preceded Robin’s mad run through the town.

“I was coming to kill you and Emma, you know.”

“I’ll admit I was surprised you never showed up,” Mary Margaret said, not unnerved in the least. Perhaps even a little disappointed. “David and I kept each other busy enough, though.”

“Don’t tell me you actually raised your voices.” Mary Margaret rolled her eyes, and Regina pressed on with a laugh. “What did you argue about, who’s prettier?”

“Things got a bit more…heated than that.”

Regina quickly held up a hand, noting the way the girl’s cheeks were coloring and the confessional air that had descended on the room. “I don’t want to know.”

Mary Margaret rattled on anyway, and Regina caught the odd detail about Charming’s sword and how Emma had broken the curse with the power of sisterhood (or something equally inane), but mostly she thought of Robin, and how the thief and the man had looked at her the same: with that burning, grasping love no fire could ever hope to match. 


End file.
